Today I joined a group of 5 people on a catamaran group sailing with an instructor.

By now the instructor knows me, so he told the others they could look at my sails if they were not able to get going under sail. No pressure! 😀

The sail started out super slow, hardly any wind, so that the instructor had started to raft up all the boats so that he could give us some stationary lessons while we waited for the wind. But as I was starting to tie up to the boat next to me, my boat caught a good wind so he told us all to detach from each other and start sailing!

This is only my second time out on a dingy catamaran. So I was super surprised to see how fast the boat took off with the wind like 45 degrees off the stern. It was really zipping along, much faster than I am used to on a monohull sailing dinghy, like a laser.

Since I was mainly the only one with enough experience to just get going quickly I found myself zipping along pretty far away from the group, just enjoying the sailing. I managed a jibe and a sloppy tack, and eventually I made it back to the group. The basic way that this type of group outing goes, is that the instructor is in a motor dingy, and he guides everyone to sail towards him, to catch the strongest wind available. And you typically try to get the boats all in a row if possible.

So we did that for awhile, until eventually we set up a quick race, a down and back race. I felt pretty confident, able to pick up speed and pass most of the boats but I miffed the end where I didn’t understand where the finish line was exactly. Doh!

After the race we tied the boats together and got towed back to the base, where we took the sails down and came back onshore. It turned out to be a pretty nice day sail!

I am now starting to get accustomed to sailing the cats so for my next outings I am going to try and tighten up my technique. I feel like running and broad reaching I am decent at, and even jibing I was able to execute without too much trouble. But upwind sailing, especially executing a tack without almost stopping completely, I still don’t have down. I think this is normal for cats, but still need to up my game on wind awareness and being able to turn the bows through the wind. Till next time!